


Unquiet

by Maker_of_Rune_Vests



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: And to Hel, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Asgardian Reader (Marvel), Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Dreams, F/M, Fix-It, Ghost Loki, Lost in space - Freeform, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), You go to the moon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-25
Packaged: 2019-05-23 04:51:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 7,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14927462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maker_of_Rune_Vests/pseuds/Maker_of_Rune_Vests
Summary: After Thanos attacks, Loki haunts your dreams and your escape pod.





	1. Chapter 1

    You kneel close to the wall of the Ark, scratching straight lines into the kingfisher-blue paint with a bit of loose metal you found. The grey metal underneath shines, each rune (just big enough to read) more of a shield for this ship.  
    “If I may ask…what are you doing?”  
    You feel your face and neck turning a feverish pink. It’s a familiar voice, but not one that has ever spoken to you before. One time Prince Loki nodded to you, and you turned rose-colored and couldn’t sleep for two nights. You’ve daydreamed about talking to him more times than you can count, though you daydreamed of doing it in a garden, looking at flowers—not in a refugee ship, scratching runes into the wall.  
    “Runes, my lord,” you say in a much higher voice than you meant to, as you rise and turn around. “I’m writing runes of protection.”  
    He tilts his head, looking down at you. There are spatters of dirt and Berserker on his leather armor, and his hair is as wavy and wild as smoke from a candle extinguished by the wind. Nothing about his face is symmetrical, except his green eyes.  
    “Do you practice any other forms of magic?” he asks, the corner of his mouth rising. “Besides vandalizing ships with runes and spending an uncannily long time without blinking.”  
    You feel your face become even pinker, and swallow hard. “I have strange dreams,” you say quietly. “I’ll dream about the future, and about things in the past that I did not know about. And sometimes I talk to the dead in my dreams. I know not if it’s magic….”  
    “I would consider it so,” he says, looking at you without blinking. Apparently that’s a form of magic you both practice. “Indeed, I envy the power.” He smiles at you. You feel as if you are melting, and have a suspicion that he knows. “I’ve noticed you….”  
    He has been your hero for all your life and your unrequited love for all your womanhood.  
You hope rather desperately that he isn’t going to say that he’s noticed you gazing adoringly at him. Or choking on tears thanks to “The Tragedy of Loki of Asgard.”  
    “…and the runes you leave behind. We have a paucity of attempters of magic in Asgard, let alone masters. I could bring you from the former to the latter.”  
    He looks at you expectantly, one brow raised.  
      
    You draw in a deep breath. “I would be grateful, my lord.”  
   


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter has a ghost with visible injuries.

Night. You are close to a window, lying on a hard floor, surrounded by whispers and sleeping breathing. A few people snore. A baby is crying, and so is someone who is not a baby. The floor vibrates under you, and outside the window stars shine.   
    It seems as if you’ve always been in this ship, as if Asgard was a dream, as if seeing it burn was a dream. You are you and runes are runes and dreams—real life and dreams are too much like each other. You touch the cool glass and the warm, trembling floor, marking runes of protection on both with your finger.   
    The ship stops. Stops. You fly, all the people flying for a moment that ends in colliding with floor and walls and people and all the people screaming.  
    You push your hand against the wall and get to your feet, pressing against the wall as voices get louder and louder. The ship is still trembling, but the stars outside the windows are immobile. People are screaming somewhere. The other rooms where people were sleeping.  
    The door slams open and the Valkyrie strides in, a blue sword as beautiful as a crystal in her hand. “Escape pods. Now! Mad Titan.”   
    When a legend yells to escape, warriors run. Too many people running and pushing.You stay by the wall, swiping rune after rune onto it as you stare at the running.  
    “Go!” Valkyrie shouts.The baby is still crying. It should be proud. It’s louder than hundreds of escaping men. You don’t remember following them, but now you are.  
    The escape pods are like flying hallways with metal floors and window ceilings and walls. You follow an old man and a woman with orange braids into one that already has twelve people in it, and nine more follow you. You do not know any of them.  
    The door closes, and you fly away from the Ark, looking back at it through the ceiling and walls. And then you see the monstrosity.  
    It looks like a weapon melded with a demon and became a ship.  
    You sink down onto the floor, folding your legs, and wrap your arms around yourself. This pod trembles too.  
    Flying, flying, flying, stars and you can still see the monstrosity, until there is so much purple light that the monstrosity and the stars in that half of the sky are blared out. 

* * *

  
_Walking on space is difficult, because you are never sure where nothing is going to be next. Sometimes you step and rise a foot. Other times you step and step down two feet. And always there is no reason you can see why you are not falling. Space is under your boots. The stars are all far away, though too close to be safe, and all around you is space._   
_No, there is a person walking beside you, rising and stepping down as you are, a caped silhouette with a white clenched hand. You tilt your head to see his face. It’s Loki, looking ahead with great anxiety._   
_You look ahead and see a ship with bent wings like a hawk, so far away that though you can see people inside, you cannot tell what they look like—and then a man in black armor is on the front of the ship. King Thor. You’re sure it’s King Thor._   
_A man and a giant man climb out of the ship onto its roof, and pull him up and then down into the ship, and then the hawk-like ship hovers there, and you and Loki stay still, watching it._   
_There is movement in the ship, and through the front window you see Thor, lurching but on his feet. He is alive, and as you turn toward Loki you see his clenched fist relax._   
_You look up at him and hear yourself asking, “What happened?” And then it occurs to you to ask, “Why are we standing on space?”_   
_“I know not,” Loki says softly as the hawklike ship flies away. He turns toward you and you feel as if you are finally falling. His neck…._ _You’ve never seen bruises like that. Or anyone hold their head quite like that._

* * *

  
    You’re in the escape pod, lying on the floor, and your head aches. “You hit your head on the wall,” the woman with orange braids says. “I helped you lie down.”  
    “Thank you,” you say very quietly. You sit up and look out through the glass wall. There is nobody outside, that you can see, and no ships.


	3. Chapter 3

“Be quiet.” The bald man piloting the ship says it dispassionately but definitely. “They’re all dead. We all saw the explosion. We do not want to hear you claiming you dreamed about anyone’s ghosts.”  
    You sigh, back against the window, hands folded on your knees. “My dreams are real, and I thought you all would want to know that King Thor is alive,” you say.  
    “You’re either a fool or a witch,” another man says.  
    You open your mouth and then close it. There has been enough sad bickering in the pod already.  
    The hours pass slowly. Nobody talk, except to squabble. A few people are asleep, but most stare out at the stars, or ahead at the fleet of other escape pods, most of them ahead of yours. Valkyrie is in one of them, leading you to Midgard. Or so she said in a message that she sent to every pod.  
    She probably does not know that Thor is alive. Or that Loki isn’t. You cannot erase from your mind his ghost, and you would not if you could. Where is he now?  
    More hours pass. You stretch, and eat your portion of something the color of nuts and grain. Someone is crying, somewhere in the pod. The woman with orange braids. You carefully rise and move across and back in the pod, and sit beside her. “Friends, or family?” you ask, voice gentle.  
    She scoots away from you, mumbling, “Dream the answer.”  
    This is why you are not mourning friends. A witch who dreams of the dead and tells her friends what they have done and will do does not retain them. You look out the window at the stars.  
    The orange-braided woman gasps and you look at her and do not understand. You aren’t dreaming.  
    She’s like the poppy you picked last year and dried, its petals are orange as her hair. It dried and looked as orange and silky as when you picked it. But when you stroked its petal, it lightly shattered into soft orange dust.  
    Just like she is. But she can’t be, because you aren’t dreaming—oh. Oh.  
    They’re all poppies. They’re all dust. The man who called you names, the man who’s driving. A girl, another man—an old woman gasps, wrinkled hands becoming shattered poppy petals and you remember how to move, leaping towards her over a strewing of dust. You touch her shoulder. “This isn’t a dream, you don’t have to!”  
    And she is dust. Your hands bear dust, like when you touched the poppy.  
    There are twelve people standing on a dusty floor in an unsteered escape pod, and all of you have forgotten how to move and how to understand that this is not a dream.

* * *

  
     The man who is piloting the pod doesn’t think he knows how. But all the other people were certain that they did not know how, so he is in the driver’s seat, silently crying.  
    Everyone is, or was, or looks as if they are going to. Nobody knows what happened. Nobody has theories, though you heard one man whisper that you had touched his wife. He must have been the husband of the old woman. But the woman he whispered that to whispered back, “She didn’t touch anyone else.”  
    You are sitting on a dustless piece of floor at the back of the ship, trying to wake up. This has to be a dream. Has to be, has to be, has to be…. You bury your face against your arm and cry, thinking of orange hair and wrinkled hands and poppies. 

* * *

  
_Loki says your name, and you lift your head, rubbing tears away from your eyes with the back of your hand. You’re sitting in a field, surrounded by orange poppies, and Loki is standing close enough that you could touch him. More light is passing through him than there ought to be. “Yes, my lord?”_  
_He offers you his hand, to help you rise, and you reach up to take it, but he is not tangible. “I’m dreaming again,” you say softly, standing up._  
_“I’m dead again, and we are in a vast field of illusory flowers,” he says with a slight smile. “Is there anything else we need to establish?” He is sad. You know that as clearly as you know that the poppies are orange and that skies are not pale green, even if this one is._  
_“Why did they turn to dust?” you ask, clenching folds of your skirt in your hands. It is not a dream, or dust._  
_“Dust?” Words are not usually so sudden in dreams. His brows rise anxiously. “Half of them? Already?”_  
_“Yes,” you whisper._  
_His lips part, and he looks up at the green sky, touching the blackness on his throat. An agonized energy pushes at you and blows petals off the poppies. “He won.”_  
_“Who won?” you ask softly. You remember something you had forgotten, that the Valkyrie said. “The Mad Titan?”_  
_You see Loki draw in a long breath, though you do not hear it, and the energy stops pushing you. “Indeed.” He looks down at you. “Are you journeying to Midgard?”_  
_“Yes, following the Valkyrie.” Or dust._  
_“If you meet Thor, tell him this. Tell him that the sun rises with as much light after an eclipse as after a sunset.”_  
_You repeat it: “The sun rises with as much light after an eclipse as after a sunset.”_  
_Loki smiles slightly. “And remember it yourself. Our first and last lesson.”_  
_Faintly, you hear arguing sounds. “I’ll remember, my lord,” you say. “And I’ll tell him.”  Somebody shouts something about being lost._

* * *

  
    “I told you I knew not how to drive this!”  
    Several people are shouting all at the same time, and as you raise your head and sit up, you realize from what they are vociferating and from the glass walls that you are all lost. The sky has no escape pods in it except yours.  
   


	4. Chapter 4

    It’s been four days since you were lost. Rations are halved. People are despairing. No pods are in the sky, and you have had no dreams, even though you’ve drawn the sun rune with your finger on the walls and on the floor, the only rune you think worth using anymore. Line, angle, line, angle, line.  
    You draw it again before curling up in a corner and trying to sleep. The pod vibrates differently than the Ark did….

* * *

  
_Wooden boards under you, and the sun shining golden. You blink and sit up, and find yourself gazing out at a place where an audience should be, a place that you know burned and burst. You’re sitting on the stage where “The Tragedy of Loki of Asgard” was performed._  
_“Hello, again.” You turn your head and see Loki sitting beside you, looking at you with a curious smile. “Are you following me?”_  
_“No, my lord. This just happens,” you say, returning the smile. “I know not why, except—except that I think of you often.”_  
_He tilts his head, and you wince as his bruises become more visible. “Might I inquire why? And you may use my name—postmortem witch dreams are an informal occasion.”_  
_And an occasion for honesty. But even dreaming, your heart beats hard at the idea of being honest. You trace a crack in the floor with your finger, looking down at it, and say softly, “I have always adored you.”_  
_Silence. You stare intensely at the crack in the floor and at your hand, and wish you could sink through the stage. This is a dream. Maybe you can. And then his hand hovers over yours. You feel energy touch the back of your hand and brush your fingers. “Change that to remembrance.”_  
_“I see no need to change it,” you say. “But I will remember you.” You raise your eyes to his face. “And dream about you.” You say it apologetically; you cannot help dreaming about him._  
_“Then perhaps I can give you more lessons,” he says with a smile, as if this were normal. He lifts his hand and brushes hair back from his face, and gazes at the purple roses climbing the pillars. “Thor is alive,” he says. “Do you remember my message for him?”_  
_“The sun rises with as much light after an eclipse as after a sunset,” you say. And then you recall. “But…I’m not sure I’ll be able to give it to him. We’re lost in space.” Loki looks at you sharply, brows rising. “Not all the pods. Just ours.”_  
_Loki stands up._

* * *

  
    You open your eyes and slowly lift your head, rubbing your kinked neck.  
    The man who is driving yelps as green light floods the front of the pod. Loki stands beside him, green light and nothing but green light.


	5. Chapter 5

    “Keep turning it.” The steering lever is hard to pull, designed for a strong man, but you brace your feet against the floor and keep it pulled as far to the left as you can.  
    “We’re—turning all the way around,” you say.  
    “Because you were going in precisely the wrong direction,” Loki says. His voice sounds just like it always does, but the green light on your hands and on the lever and reflected off the windshield reminds you that he is not in the state he used to be in. “There, stop steering.”  
    The lever returns to the middle of its slot, and you unclamp your hands. “Do we go straight now?”  
    “If all goes as expected,” Loki replies.   
    You look up at him. “Thank you.” You expect the other people in the pod to echo you, but when you glance back at them, they are petrified and unspeaking.   
    “They should thank you,” Loki says in a low voice, folding his arms. You can see him reflected in the windshield as clearly as you can see him by looking beside you.  
    “Why?” you ask. “I only did what you told me.”  
    One of his brows rises. “How exactly do you think I’m here?”  
    “You’re a ghost—“ you start to say, but then you hesitate. “Do you mean that my thoughts, my—my dreams when I’m awake—“  
    He spreads his arms with a sudden smile. “Ta-da!”   
    He’s here, glowing, guiding you, because you are daydreaming. You blink, processing this.  
    “You’re quite powerful,” he says, smile fading as he folds his arms again. “I’ll not need you to give Thor my message, if you visit him and envision me.”  
    “Of course,” you say softly.  
    You both are silent as the pod flies on, except that now and then Loki tells you to steer slightly right or left. The stars are astoundingly many here. You pass one as virescent as Loki’s phantom.  
    “Where are you, really?” you ask, voice low. You remember that he said you could use his name and add hesitantly, “Loki.”  
      “Hel,” he says briefly. His expression is neutral, and his voice sounds as if he were discussing history with you.  
    You draw in your breath, horrified.   
    “No need to be so appalled, my dreamer,” he adds, tipping his head up as a comet speeds miles over the pod. “It’s like Asgard.”  
    “Like Asgard?” That seems improbable.   
    He is silent. A star ahead shines into the pod, and as you squint you see two realms between you and it, the smaller one closer than the other. “Midgard,” Loki says.  
    “And the moon and sun.”   
    Loki vanishes, and the other Asgardians stampede towards the front of the vehicle to stare out and cheer. Someone shoves you out of the seat, and you slip out of the group. They cannot become lost now that you can see Midgard.


	6. Chapter 6

Midgard is blue and green and brown, and round, and looks like it fell into soapy water and was washed but not rinsed. It is spinning, so slowly that you only realize it is turning when you realize that you can see a piece of green and brown land at the left edge where there used to just be blue.   
    The rough round realm that is the moon is very close now, and to your surprise the pod turns towards it. “We need to fly straight,” you say, interrupting whispers.  
    They all look at you, and they all do not like you. “We don’t need a ghost-summoning witch,” one of them retorts. “We just escaped one of those.” And suddenly two of them move towards you with rope in their hands.  
    What are they doing? What’s going on? You feel bewildered, and then fear galvanizes you and you leap back against the wall, hands raised. “Yes, I’m a witch! I dream, and I write runes. So do you! When you sleep, and when you write letters!”  
    Someone scoffs, and then a woman grabs one of your arms and a man grabs the other and they force you to turn so they can tie your hands together, pushing you against the glass wall as the pod lands on the dark grey moon. You’ve forgotten how to talk. This doesn’t feel real.  
    Someone opens the door and icy cold  pours into the pod and then you’re shoved out the door.  
    The door closes as you fall onto the dark stone, colder than ice. The pod flies away as you raise your head. You feel ice growing on you an instant after you feel your tears freeze.  
     Everything is dark. You see a flash of green light—

* * *

  
    You open your eyes (the frozen tears are gone) and see Loki looking down at you. He is kneeling beside you, and behind him is a hall that looks like someone turned out all the lights in the Asgardian palace and then hung black tapestries over the windows and painted red anger onto the ceiling.   
    “It doesn’t look quite like Asgard,” you say softly, and shudder. You close your eyes for a moment, and when you open them he has silently gotten up. He’s leaving, you think, and panic flies through you. “Please don’t leave me alone, they left me alone—“ You stop short, as he bends and holds out his hands to you.  
    You put your hands in his, and he helps you rise. “I’m not going to abandon you after causing your murder.” The shadows above his eyes and under his cheekbones are darker than the hall, and his eyes are bright with rage.  
    “It isn’t your fault they panicked,” you say. They misunderstood, they were terrified, it makes sense that your powers reminded them of Hela. But you know it is bizarre that you are not angry. You suppose they’ll say that you became dust, and nobody will know that you didn’t.   
    “It is my fault that I had no expectation of it,” he replies. He releases your hands, and you clasp them together, and then turn your head as across the end of the hall lopes a vast black creature, half as tall as the ceiling, paws thumping into the engraved floor. His tail is longer than two or three people stacked would be tall. Fenris.  You remember him growling on the Bifrost, paws breaking crystals off and sending them fountaining up as he ran towards you.    
    “Is Hela here?” you ask.  
    Loki gestures comprehensively, walking down the hall towards where Fenris ran. “Why do you think this realm looks like Asgard’s soul?” he asks, not turning his head.  
    His cape billows as he takes a quicker step and for a moment, you think there is a mirror on the wall reflecting him—a darker billow of green fabric. No, it stays when he walks past it. You follow him, half running across the knots limned into the floor, and half to see what the darker billow is.  
    Painted on the wall, a woman with a face like a poisoned white rose and a grown like its thorns sits on an ungleaming golden throne, green cape flowing from her back and legs crossed. “She’s Queen of Hel,” you realize. You reach out and touch the rune painted at the top of the picture, Hagall. The first letter in her name.   
    Loki has paused at the end of the hall, waiting for you, and to your surprise his eyes are wide with inspiration when you reach him. “She’s queen of Hel,” you say again.  
    A bright, troublesome smile. “And our escape. How learned are you regarding exits from Hel?”  
    You blink. “I knew not that they existed.”  
    He catches hold of your hand, with so much energy that you feel as if it is cascading from him and into you. “They always require two.” 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I changed the rating to Teen and Up Audiences because of a kiss.

    Hela’s palace has dozens of corridors and dark windows and dark hangings and runic carvings that all look similar enough that you cannot tell if you have been in a corridor before or not. Loki does not seem at all confused. Indeed, he’s paying more attention to telling you about exits from Hel than he is to scrutinizing the walls. “One must come specifically in order to retrieve the other,” he says, voice barely loud enough for you to hear. He lets go of your hand and reaches up to push hair out of his face.  
      
    You nod, understanding that this is what you must make Hela think you did. “Usually, they have been linked—brothers, or a parent and a child, or wedded. That is an extraneous detail.” He is twirling a lock of hair around his finger, far too fast for a calm person.  
      
    “Are we going to talk to her now?” you ask quietly.  
      
    “Yes.” He looks at you with one brow raised. “If you are ready.”  
      
    “I am,” you say without doubt. You smile ruefully. “It’s high time both of us left the state of being murdered.”    
      
    His laugh echoes quietly off the martial murals. “A reasonable opinion, my dreamer.” There is something in his voice that makes you feel as if he is glad you are with him.  
      
    You turn a corner and at last a corridor has an end, in doors that should be reflective bright gold, but the hall is too dark and they have no light to beam back. You wonder what is outside all those mirky windows. Nothing?  
      
    “I crave audience with Hela, Queen of Hel,” Loki says when you are a couple yards away from the doors, loudly enough that the last word echoes. Hel, Hel…  
      
    From the dark corners on either side of the doors come sounds like a dog running teeth down the side of a bone, and two skeletons step toward the doors, green light filling the holes in their armor and between their bones. Their armor groans more than the hinges as they shove the doors open, disclosing a faraway, empty throne.  
  
    Loki does not look at you, or at the skeletons; he is staring at the throne as if he suspects that Hela is sitting there invisibly. He offers you his arm, and you put your hand on his cold bracer and walk forward with him through the doors and past the skeletons.     
      
    The doors slam after you, hinges screaming as loudly as they slam, but Loki walks forward without halting. You tighten your grip on his bracer a little, and walk at his pace. Its strange to be frightened, since you’re dead; Hela cannot kill you. But there are skeletons in the darkness and paintings over your heads of wolf riding and thrall scourging.  
      
    “You’ve brought a sacrifice?” You almost scream at how suddenly the voice comes from behind you. It’s a woman’s voice, deep, both cultured and rude.  
  
    Loki does not turn around, and neither do you. He stands as still as a statue, and replies, “No, she has come to make a bargain.”  
  
    Hela laughs. “Oh? Why?” Her cape brushes against your legs as she passes you and turns to face you, standing far too close. A strand of her black hair is trailing across her mauve lips, and she flicks it off with a long black nail.“You’re not another child Odin had, are you?”  
      
    “No, my lady Hela,” you say softly.  
      
    “Then why are you here?” She puts a strong pale finger under your chin and tips your head up. Her nail pokes your neck, and you feel Loki’s arm rise slightly as he tenses. _Usually, they have been linked—brothers, or a parent and a child, or wedded._  
  
    “We are betrothed,” you say steadily, looking into her eyes.  They narrow.  
      
    “And were to be married next month,” Loki says, and you turn to him, pulling away from Hela’s finger. He looks down at you with what looks like adoration, arm slipping around your waist.  
  
    Hela steps back. “Oh, please.”  
      
    Loki touches your cheek with his free hand, brows rising questioningly for an instant. You nod, so slightly that Hela shouldn’t be able to notice, and close your eyes as he bends his head to kiss you. His lips barely brush yours and then press hard against them as he pulls you close, hand on your lower back. You tremble as you run your hands up his arms to rest on his strong shoulders, to keep from falling from your quivering and from how he’s bending over you.  
      
    “ _Stop_ ,” Hela says, and he does. You cling to his arm as he turns his attention back to her, for the sake of acting and because you feel very light-headed. Her face is wry with disgust. “Well done. You’ve made the Goddess of Death want to vomit.”  
  
    “And expel us from her realm?” Loki says with a bit of a grin.  
      
    Hela turns away and striding up the steps to the throne. She twists as she sits down, legs crossing. “Come here.” She points at you and you step away from Loki and walk toward the throne. “Kneel.” You do, at the bottom of the steps.  
  
    Hela smiles at you, teeth reflecting more light than you thought there was in the room. “You have two choices. I’ll let you go alone at once—send you anywhere you wish, no bargain necessary. I like witches. Or—“ She pauses and looks past you, presumably at Loki. “I’ll hold a vote among the people of Asgard. Let them choose if they want Prince Loki alive or dead.” Her smile is vicious. “And I’ll use your betrothed as my channel to ask them.”  
  
    “In dreams,” you guess.  
      
    “Perilous and painful,” Hela says softly, smiling down at you. “Make your choice, witch.”  
      
    You swallow hard, certain but frightened. “I would not abandon a friend. I certainly will not abandon my betrothed.”


	8. Chapter 8

    “But you should drive a harder bargain,” Loki says behind you. You look over your shoulder at him, surprised. His eyes leave you and he stares up at Hela, arms folded. “You know they will vote against my return, so why not make losing more devastating—make the vote for or against the resurrection of all Asgardians the Mad Titan massacred?”   
      
    Hela’s brows fly up. “And tell them it is only for yours.” She smiles thinly. “What devastation you’re pleading for…unless you believe they’d thank me for your resurrection.” The smile becomes mocking. “Unfortunately, I don’t have them.” She rises abruptly. “They’re in Valhalla.”   
      
    She glides down the steps, telling you, “Get up.” You do, doing your best not to look frightened. It surprises you that Loki does not object to your trying this, that he just wanted it to be a greater attempt. You are doing it willingly and will not change your mind, but…. You turn as Hela moves between you and Loki. He is watching you, eyes narrowed, white-knuckled.   
      
    Again Hela moves behind you and grips your shoulders before you can turn, holding so hard that you are sure you’ll have bruises when you are resurrected. If you are resurrected. She snaps out a word you do not understand so suddenly that you jump. Loki takes a quick step forward, and then your eyes unfocus.  
  
    A blur.  
  
    Tents before you. A couple hundred, Midgardian tents on a grassy field. Through a tent canvas—Hela’s voice, mocking, asking the people in the tent—out, grass, stars—into the next tent—and faster. You cannot see anything, you cannot hear anything, blur and sound and blur and sound and your head feels as if it will shatter.   
      
    And then too many of the sounds are one word the same for it to blur entirely. Yes. Hundreds of people saying “Yes.”   
  
    Pain rips through your head and your shoulders as Hela’s voice stops abruptly, as the blur becomes unblurred blackness, as you hear nothing but “Yes”—and she shoves you and you fall forward toward the carved floor of her throneroom and then against Loki, who stepped in front of you. He steadies you as you close your eyes tightly and try to feel as if your head has thoughts instead of just explosions in it.   
  
    “I should have known they were idiots,” Hela’s voice sneers. “Go. And…beware of dog.”  
       
    Loki’s hair brushes your cheek. “Can you walk?” he asks, so quietly that you barely hear him. His hand moves reassuringly across your back.  
      
     Your eyes blink open and you try to draw a deep breath. You don’t need to breathe…which makes sense, since you’re dead, but makes you quite anxious to leave Hel. “Yes.”  
The doors of the throneroom are flying open before you.  
      
    Loki releases you and offers you his arm, and you walks slowly out of the throne room with him. The headache is lessening, and you resist the urge to look back at Hela or to stare at the skeletons whose green glowing eyes and mouths you see in your peripheral vision a moment after the doors slam behind you.  
      
    Loki walks steadily, as fast as you can and no faster. “We’ll walk to the front gate of the palace,” he tells you. “It’s—“ His voice breaks off as snarling reverberates through the corridors  
      
    “Fenris.”  
      
    A spurt of energy comes to you and your hand slides from Loki’s bracer to grip his hand and you both run. Your head pounds as you try to keep up, knowing that he could be running far faster than this. But he does not pull away and leave you behind; indeed, he grips your hand more securely as behind you you hear paws breaking stone and a soft splash now and then that must be saliva dripping from the wolf’s tongue.   
  
    You see stars and your legs forget how to be stiff and move. Loki picks you up effortlessly and runs around a corner and far down another corridor where he suddenly sets you down on the floor and stands still, back toward you, facing the end on the corridor into which Fenris will come. He raises his hands and green light flashes across the corridor. You see his tall silhouette and then have to close your eyes. The green light shines through your lids and ceases, and you open your eyes to see Loki standing in front of a wall just as golden as the walls beside you, blocking the corridor. Paws shatter the floor on the other side, louder and louder, as Loki turns toward you and lifts you into his arms again.  
  
    The bounding sounds end. Whining. Flummoxed whining.   
      
    Loki walks away from the illusory wall, a grin tilting across his face. You smile too, feeling hopeful. And awkward. “I can walk,” you say softly, as he turns another corner. You can see his long lashes as he blinks.  
  
    “And?” he asks, mischief in his voice.  
  
    Why argue? He can walk faster carrying you than you can walk, exhausted as you are, and…. You close your eyes and let your head rest on his shoulder, pretending that the betrothal is real.   
      
    It is not long at all until he stops and you open your eyes to see the front gates of the palace, closed. Loki gently sets you on your feet and you both stand silently, both uncertain if Midgard or some other realm or more Hel is on the other side of those golden doors. Loki puts one of his palms on each and pushes them outwards.


	9. Chapter 9

    Dawn blazes through them, and Loki exclaims “Yes!” He reaches back to catch cold of your hand, and both of you step out into tall green grass. You wheeze as your heart pounds and as you need to breath again, and then you are breathing, and your heart is beating fast and steadily, and you can feel a pulse in Loki’s hand before he releases your and turns back to the gate you emerged from, which now are flat in the ground like a trapdoor, though you walked out of them, not climbed out of them. Green light shines around them, and as Loki raises his hand, it lifts on each side. He moves his hands nearer and nearer to each other and the hole shrinks. When his hands clasp together, it disappears.  
      
    “This is Midgard,” you say as he reaches up to brush hair out of his face. You can’t stop smiling. “Where the others are. This is what the grass looked like where they voted.”  
      
    “Then we’ll find them—after you rest,” Loki says with a smile. His eyes shine in the sunlight. He reaches up and unfastens his cape, and spreads it on the grass, and you sit, stroking the long grass beside you. You’re alive. He’s alive.  
      
    “And later you can teach me magic,” you say. “If you still are willing to.”  
      
    Loki laughs as he sits beside you, a little closer than you would expect. “If you still desire me to, after you were murdered for witchcraft….” He picks a blade of grass, and then two others and knots the ends together; and then braids them, frowning at the green weaving. “After being Hela’s channel,” he adds softly.  
  
    You blink, absentmindedly spreading and fisting your shaking fingers. “I…I would have even if you had forbidden me.” The corner of his mouth curves up, and the lines leave from between his brows.  
  
    You smile back at him, and sit quietly while your headache fades away and you almost stop shaking. Loki adds more grass to the grass braid, though you feel as if he is only looking at it when you are looking at him. After several minutes, he lightly tosses it into the grass without tying the end. “I should inform Thor that I’ve had a third renaissance….” He laughs, and reaches for your hand, fingers brushing across your palm and slipping between yours. “And that I’m betrothed.”  
  
    Your mouth opens, and then closes, as you stare at him. Is he jesting? Did he…what….  
  
    His smile vanishes and he releases your hand, tossing hair back from his face. “Unless you elect for that to have been and to remain only a ploy.” He smiles, and you can tell that it is not genuine. “I thank you—  
  
    “No,” you get out, at the wrong moment so that it sounds like you mean that he doesn’t thank you. You can feel your face turning pink. “Do you—did you—do you mean that you….”  
  
    “Would not wish to part from a friend so clever and so loyal, no matter how new,” he says softly. “I desire you to be mine.”  
  
    You’ve imagined him smiling at you, looking gently at you, looking fondly at you, but you’ve never imagined him looking at you so yearningly. “I am yours,” you say, and dismiss your shyness enough to put your hands on his shoulders and tilt your head up and lightly kiss him. As your eyes open his arms wrap tightly around you, and you have just long enough to take a breath and notice how tender his expression before he presses his lips to yours.       
      
    It’s a gentler kiss than the one in Hel. You put your arms around him, reaching up to stroke his hair as his lips move from your mouth to your throat and then to your collarbone. It’s hard to breathe, your heart is beating so fast.  
      
    Something zooms above you and you both look up to see one last pod coming in for a landing. Loki’s jaw tenses, mouth becoming a perilous smile. Without needing to say anything, he rises, helping you up as he does, and strides off across the grass, following the pod.    
      
    You reach the top of a hill and see it landing in an open space in the middle of a haphazard town of tents and pods and pods with tent additions, and walk down without fear but with uncertainty. What does one say when meeting people who left one on the moon?  
    The door they threw you out of opens when you are four or so yards away, and they climb out. They don’t look heartless, or frightened. Sad and cramped and relieved—  
      
    Two of them see you at the same time and yelp, and they all stare at you, frozen; and then they look up sharply as you feel Loki’s arm go around your shoulders. A dagger reflects the dawn in his other hand. They run helter-skelter.  
  
    “Which ones deserve to die? All of them?” Loki asks, voice as soft as if he were asking you what flowers you’d like in a bouquet, and you look up at him in horror.  
      
    “I don’t want anyone to die!” you exclaim.  
      
    Loki frowns slightly. “If you would prefer them to be legally tried, I’m certain Thor would be willing to sentence them.”  
      
    You shake your head. “No, they were frightened, and, well, they won’t leave anyone on the moon again.”  
  
    Loki looks as if he is certain they will leave people on the moon, but his dagger vanishes. He is about to say something when King Thor’s voice says, “Loki!” He stands between a pod and a tent and stares at Loki with almost as much befuddlement as your murderers stared at you.  
  
    Loki tenses and quickly steps not just toward Thor but to the side—so that you are out of the way, you realize. He’s scratching his palm. “I’m betrothed,” he proclaims. “And alive.”  
  
    You had been bemused that Loki had not wanted to tell Thor he was alive as soon as you were well enough to walk, but…you’d never expected him to look almost as uneasy as when he was talking to Hela. No, more uneasy. It makes you freeze when Thor all but throws himself toward Loki.  
      
    He’s hugging him. And you hear something that might be crying, and Loki’s head bends a little to rest on his brother’s shoulder.  
  
    You smile and make haste away to the other side of a tent, because you don’t want to stare at their reunion. The sun is bright now, far brighter than it was at dawn. The white tent glares in the light. You stand with your back to it, protecting your eyes with your hand and gazing across the grass, people walking in it here and there, to mountains. Two Asgards could fit between the peaks and you.  
  
    You walk a few yards away from the tent and with your free hand you trace the runes of the word “Asgard” in the air, and then start laughing as you see one of the people, one of the men on your pod, throw himself flat into the grass. He must think you’re casting a spell at him, and is ducking.  
  
    “Well done,” Loki says behind you, and you turn to see him grinning. “Terrifying your enemies with a swipe of your finger—quite fitting for my betrothed from Hel.”  
  
    You laugh. “You aren’t going to call me me that…are you?”  
  
    “Not often,” he says innocently, giving you his arm. “Thor wants to meet you.”  
  
    The tents and pods are few as you walk back toward them, and your smiles fade. “Thor says more survived than the number of shelters imply,” Loki says softly. “And we will undertake to annul the Titan’s dissolutions, though I know not if we can.”  
  
    “Says the god who just left Hel,” you dare to say, and he laughs.  
      
    “I see your point, my dreamer.”

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a prompt from https://fanfic-collection.tumblr.com/
> 
> Valkyrie and escape pods: https://www.reddit.com/r/marvelstudios/comments/8g10pg/joe_russo_came_and_had_a_qa_at_our_high_school/dy83jb5/?st=jic7fqno&sh=c515664e
> 
> A petition "[t]o make sure Marvel Studios knows how popular Loki is and ensure that he comes back in the next film (spoilers for infinity war) that he is alive and back not only as a flashback, but returns fully alive": https://www.change.org/p/marvel-studios-loki-returning-in-avengers-4-alive


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